We have been doing some work recently on eLearning content for a couple of providers as the COVID pandemic has given them the impetus to upgrade the content in their Learning Management System (LMS). We have used a few tools to do this but it has become clear to us that there isn’t a system available for the non-professional developer to easily create content.
There are some great systems such as Captivate, Articulate, Gomo learning etc but they are costly. It costs $1300 per user per year Articulate. That is great if you are a full-time developer and you use it each day, but what if you just need to build the occasional bit of content for an LMS? The other thing that we have noticed is that some of these systems are incredibly complex to use. Again, if you are a full-time developer then this will be okay as you use the tools day in, day out.
Why is content important?
The COVID pandemic has led many education and training providers to turn to technology to support them in their delivery. There have been lots of meetings held on Zoom, Teams, GotoMeeting etc and this has been a really interesting experience for teachers, trainers and learners. However, the LMS experience for many has not been so good. How many learners access an LMS just to find it is nothing more than a repository for information – lots of PDF documents and links to other sites? For an LMS to be useful, it needs to have great content. The LMS also needs to be well designed. Many organisations turn to Moodle because it is open source – thinking it is free – it isn’t of course, it has to be hosted, installed and maintained. As the certified reseller of Cypher Learning, we would naturally recommend Neo LMS for schools and Matrix LMS for training providers.
The content has to be interesting. It also needs to be in a format that is productive for you. Do you upload your content in Scorm, XAPI or HTML? How can you track when learners have completed modules? But, importantly, how do you create the content?
New eLearning Content Development Project
We are starting a new project this week which is incredibly exciting. With the experience of the last couple of months building eLearning content, we have decided to build a new content development system. Our aims are:
- Make it an online platform so it can be accessed from any PC / Laptop
- Make it collaborative so that multiple members of staff can access it
- Make it easy to use – we are going to design it using simple drag and drop elements
- Make it affordable – a low-cost monthly fee for users that encourages all staff to use it when they need it
Timelines
The planning and design phase has already happened and we are now into the coding/development phase. We hope to have this project completed in two months. That is ambitious but we just think this a product that education and training providers need to take their online learning to the next level.
We’ll keep you updated!
